Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer 1436
Bella Court, Greenwich, Summer
NOW THAT WE are only one step from the throne, our palace at Greenwich is a true royal palace: a fairy-tale castle, towered, crenelated, with spires and flags, surrounded by dark woodlands rich with game, and fields and meadows enclosed by a great wall so no one but our guests can visit.
It is the defining palace of our reign, showing our European style and taste, informed by our scholarship.
The little king has no ambition and no imagination – he spends all of his time in Westminster Abbey in the echoing silence of the church.
But I have wanted a beautiful palace ever since I saw Le Quesnoy.
At Greenwich, I have a palace as fine as anything in Europe.
Parliament gives us permission to clear the villagers from the common land, so they can no longer put out their beehives, run their cows and sheep, or let their pigs into the woods.
They cannot hunt for rabbits in the coverts that we are stocking with deer; I don’t want common people spoiling my beautiful views.
I order long grassy rides cut through the forests to give us good runs for hunting; hundreds of trees are felled.
I order the building of the massive stone wall all around our hundreds of acres, pierced only by gates with sentry houses and guardrooms. This defines my boundary – a kingdom within a kingdom – and keeps out all common people but those who must come in every day to serve me.
There is one great building, like Le Quesnoy, with a great hall, a minstrel gallery, and a suite of private rooms for my lord and for me.
I have even designed and commanded a room for bathing – as fine as the king’s rooms at Westminster.
A charcoal burner outside the bathroom heats the water, which is piped indoors to a huge tub made of seasoned wood and lined with linen, where I can bathe whenever I like, in hot water and sweet oils that Margery Jourdemayne makes up for me.
I command outbuildings: a meat kitchen, a sweetmeat kitchen, great cellars filled with casks of wine, a malting house, and a bakery.
There is an enclosed garden with strange animals like at Le Quesnoy.
We spend a fortune, well aware that we are building a palace for the future King of England.
I don’t forget that life is uncertain. I commission a watchtower strong enough to hold out against a siege for a year.
It has its own water supply and stores. If there is ever any danger, we will go there for refuge, burn the wooden stairs to the first-floor entrance, bar the doors, and survive for months.
I would not have known how to design this, but for Countess Jacqueline, who showed me forts and city walls and palaces; she taught me to plan for the worst outcome while hoping for the best.
I defend against my enemies in other ways too, in secret ways known only to men of knowledge.
I dedicate one of the great towers to science and philosophy.
The huge circular ground-floor room is a library to house hundreds of books, equipped with great tables where scholars can come and read, and lecterns where clerks can make word-perfect copies from a rare single manuscript.
Outside the tower is a stone-built forge with its own piped water, where artificers can experiment with casting metals and find ways to enamel and meld one metal into another.
There is an enormous stillroom attached to the forge, where liquids can be boiled into solids or distilled in purity, and an alchemical workshop for the master of the dark craft, Roger Bolingbroke, who will live here, at Bella Court as master of scholars.
His other circular room in the tower above the library has four windows that open north, south, east, and west, for Bolingbroke to draw in airs from the four points of the compass.
A circle of silver is set in the floor, and a pentangle of silver criss-crosses it.
There is a scrying mirror of polished full-length silver set into the east wall, so that someone with the Sight can stand before it and see what will come and who will join them.
A staircase leads above to the flat roof ringed by a low parapet, where Bolingbroke can give himself up to thought and watch the stars move around the night skies.
Bolingbroke sets a circle of pure silver in the flat roof and a silver post, a gnomon that throws a shadow on the circle to show him the exact hour of noon every day, winter and summer.
It is angled towards the North Star, and the style draws a line of shadow that points to the time as accurately as a clock.
‘This is the start of time,’ he tells me. ‘This is the centre of time. Here, at Greenwich. This is where time begins.’
I buy him astrolabes, quadrants, books, and my lord and his friend Abbot Wheathampstead, our chaplain Canon Southwell, my husband’s physician Gilbert Kymer, the king’s tutor John Somerset, and my clerk John Home, form a university to study the stars, the weather, the eclipses and – more than anything else – to foretell the future.
All royal courts are a centre for scholarship, invention, artistry, and entertainment; but ours is the most dazzling that England has ever seen.
Of course, I commission a tiltyard and great stables, kennels and a huge mews for hawks and falcons.
I build a tennis court for my husband to play with his friends and a ladies’ gallery for me and my ladies-in-waiting to watch.
There is a great chapel in the palace and, in my own suite of rooms, my own exquisite private chapel, where I display the hangings and the silverware, the prayer books and the crystal monstrance that Queen Joan gave me years ago for Canon Southwell to observe the hours of prayer.
I intend that people will speak of my palace as one of the wonders of the world, and Humphrey tells me to order whatever I like.
This is to be the finest palace of England – nothing is too good for it or for me, England’s future queen.
Absorbed in creating beautiful buildings and lavish interiors, I could almost forget about the rest of the world, but messages come downriver every day from Westminster and upriver from Europe and even more distant lands.
Everyone recognises our importance: the messengers from France and beyond see my lord’s standard flying at the top of our watchtower and stop at our palace with all news and messages, before going on to the echoing quietness that is Westminster.
We know everything half a day before the king, before the privy council, so we are the first to learn in June that our false friend and new enemy Philip of Burgundy has attacked our lands in France and is threatening Calais.
‘There is no one but me; I shall go,’ my lord says. ‘My brother John is dead; the king is too young. There is nobody but me.’
I call a war council of our advisors. Bolingbroke casts a chart to show the planets; Abbot Wheathampstead fasts and prays for a vision; Canon Southwell and John Home search predictions and forecast the weather; and Margery Jourdemayne comes downriver from Westminster with her cards for foretelling, and poisons for my lord’s sword blade.
We spend the day in consultation in the new library; all our futures depend on Humphrey having a successful mission and coming home uninjured.
We don’t even think of his death; our hopes, our future – everything depends upon him outliving his nephew to take the throne of England.
In silence, slowly and surely, this has become our shared determination.
A successful campaign in France would emphasise my husband as heir to his brother Henry V – the true heir to a hero.
He has to go to war – but only if we can be sure he will survive, only if we can guarantee he will come home successful.
Margery turns the cards over and over and shrugs. ‘I see no great victory, but I don’t see defeat or death,’ she says. ‘It’s uncertain – everything in France is always misty.’
Abbot Wheathampstead puts his hand on my husband’s shoulder.
‘My lord, we’ve been friends for years, since we first studied together,’ he says.
‘I’ve dreamed of nothing but your success.
I think God will protect you, and my prayers will go with you.
’ He hesitates. ‘I’ve done some calculations,’ he says.
‘The stars are aligned for your victory, if you go this month.’
Roger Bolingbroke nods. ‘There’ll be southerly winds to take you to Calais and good weather all month,’ he says.
‘When I pray for guidance, this comes to me: don’t get bogged down in little battles; don’t be tempted to pursue the Burgundians if they take flight.
All you need is one great charge against them, to break up the siege party and protect Calais, and then get yourself home again to public acclaim.
If you can drive them away, that’s enough – do that and gather the praise for it.
Don’t stay too long in France; don’t go from victory to a new campaign or defeat.
You don’t want the cardinal suggesting you should be the next English commander in France. ’
I give Roger a quick smile; of all our advisors, he is the most astute and certainly the most learned – worldly and otherworldly at once. ‘I agree,’ I say simply.
AS MY HUSBAND prepares to go to war against the deadly alliance of the French and the Burgundian forces, I know that everything depends upon him outliving the youth – his nephew, fifteen this year.
I have only ever thought in terms of childhood perils that might kill the boy: a fire in the nursery, falling from a horse, or the many fevers and rheums of childhood.
I thought nature might clear the way to the throne for us.
But now, I realise that my husband’s life is also fragile – and if he is wounded or killed in this campaign, I will be a dowager duchess, the sole heir to his fortune, and the most powerful woman in my own right – but very far from the throne.
If I were still the girl who escaped Sterborough Castle, hoping for a half-noble marriage to any sort of lord, I would think this a triumph beyond imagining.
But now – with the scar of Owen Tudor’s rejection pinching every time I think of him – I must have more than a noble title and a fortune.
Owen Tudor chose the Queen of England over me; I can only be satisfied if I replace her as Queen of England.
I cannot live my life in any sort of peace unless his woman – I will never call her his wife – bends her head and curtseys to me.
She may have stolen him from me, but she shall know me as her better.
Most of all, he will look on her: walking behind me, bowing when I pass, seated below me, swearing loyalty to me, and finally, he will know that he chose the wrong woman, the lesser woman.
None of this will happen if my lord takes an arrow in his face or a battlefield fever like his brother. My husband must go to France and do enough to come home a hero – but no more. His victory can be small and meaningless, but he must come home victorious. Then we must conceive a son.
I am a little anxious about how to convince him of this, but I need not have worried. At my first cautious words, when we are at the head of our household, walking into our chapel at Bella Court, he stops and takes my hand.
‘Eleanor, my love, I have sworn to never fail you,’ he says.
The beautiful stained-glass windows behind him are like a blazing halo.
He kneels and presses my hand to his lips.
Our household, halted in their procession into church, watch him bow his head to me.
‘I am your true and faithful knight,’ he says, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
‘I go to France to defend my country and your home. I will come home to you. Never fear, never doubt. I will not stint; I will not fail; I will come home victorious.’
Everyone can hear him pledge himself to mortal danger, only I and his closest advisors know he is pledging himself to the appearance of heroism.
Over his bowed head, I meet the thoughtful gaze of Roger Bolingbroke, and I know he is thinking, as I am thinking, that we can rely on the duke to enact an invasion of France, keeping himself safely away from any fighting, because he knows as well as we do that the greatest play of our lives will open on his return.